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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Mageia 3 KDE Review: Simple, refined, elegant and fantastic!

To be honest, I have used quite a few KDE distros in last couple of years but never saw a resource efficient distro like Mageia 2. Under similar conditions, Mageia performed better than almost all the KDE distros I have used. Plus, with Mandriva Linux going commercial and PCLinuxOS becoming independent of Mandriva, Mageia and ROSA are perhaps the limited ways to know what's brewing in the Mandriva camp. Incidentally both the Mandriva derivatives present really beautiful KDE distros!

With such a background and rich legacy, it is not surprising that Mageia enjoys a huge fan following in the Linux world. For me, the release of Mageia 3 was one of the most anticipated releases of the first half in 2013, after Debian Wheezy and Ubuntu Raring Ringtail. The release announcement of Mageia 3 promises of absolutely the very latest version of Linux kernel and applications, another reason for me to test Mageia's to ascertain it's stability.

"All grown up and ready to go dancing - Mageia 3 is
out. We still can't believe how much fun it is to make Mageia together,
and we've been doing it for two and a half years. Major new features:
updates to RPM (4.11) and urpmi, which has been given a good turnout and
cleanup; Linux kernel 3.8; systemd 195; GRUB is the default boot
loader; GRUB 2 is available; revamped package groupings for installation
and rpmdrake; KDE 4.10.2, GNOME 3.6, Xfce 4.10; LibreOffice 4.0.3;
Steam for Linux...."

I downloaded the 32-bit LiveDVD KDE (~1.4 GB in size) for this review. I used Imagewriter (Linux Mint one) to first create a live USB. I did a live boot followed by installation on my Asus K54C with 2.2 Ghz Core i3 processor and 2 GB RAM. Mageia 3 KDE version has KDE 4.10.2 with kernel 3.8 with Dolphin 2.2 as the file manager.Aesthetics

Mageia 3 looks simple but elegant and a refined operating system. Refinement is evident from the boot splash itself and is carried forward to the professional looking KDE plasma desktop interface. Artwork of the default wallpaper is very good. However, it is the only good looking wallpaper available pre-installed in the DVD I downloaded. The developers could have put some more wallpapers in there. Anyway, elegance of the distro more than makes up for it.

Hardware recognitionMageia 3 could recognized the display, wifi, touchpad and sound card automatically without any manual intervention. From hardware recognition point of view, everything worked as expected.ApplicationsMageia 3 is rich in pre-installed applications. I could locate majority of the basic applications that I look for in a distro, namely

Overall, it is a healthy list with the latest LibreOffice (even Ubuntu 13.04 has LibreOffice 4.0.2!) and more or less updated versions of other applications as well. Adobe flashplugin is not pre-installed though multimedia codecs are. Post-installation, I downloaded Adobe flashplugin from the repositories and it worked as expected with Konqueror, Firefox and Chromium browsers.

Apart from the really helpful and integrated KDE settings manager, Mageia has an additional Control center. I found it to be useful, providing additional user settings like autologin, software and hardware management, etc.

InstallationMageia installed on my system pretty quickly. I guess it took only 10-15 minutes and involved simple steps like choosing hard drive to install, location to install grub and user ID creation. Mageia wiki provides clear guidelines on installation from a live CD for Mageia 2 here. The steps didn't change for Mageia 3.

One surprising element for me was nowhere it asked for my location and time zone! It is a bit unusual and I haven't encountered the same in any other Linux OS. Anyway, I could set the time and date post installation.

RepositoriesMageia 3 has three official repositories:

Core: contains free open-sourced packages

Non-free: contains packages which are closed source

Tainted: contains packages that are released under a free license but may infringe patents and copyrights in some countries.

Further, users can use terminal/konsole to download packages as root, e.g.$ su#urpmi firefox-betawill download and install the latest Firefox 21. Even a search for Firefox beta in RPMdrake will show you the packages. KDE has it's own package manager, Apper. I didn't use it for Mageia.

PerformanceApart from highly refined and elegant interface, Mageia 3 actually performs as good as Mageia 2 on my system. With system monitor running, it consumes 233 MB of RAM and 1-5% of CPU. Just on resource usage, it is still the number one among the KDE distros I have used and the list is quite long! All the distros reported here are 32 bit editions and CPU and RAM usage is recorded on Asus K54C in 2012-13, under identical conditions (at least I tried to keep them identical!).

Apart from numbers, Mageia is really smooth to use. Except in one occasion while playing media in dragon player, I experienced a freeze, which disappeared once I installed VLC; otherwise, Mageia worked really smooth.OverallMageia 3 is, undoubtedly, a top notch KDE distro and possibly one of the top three KDE releases in 2013. I know it is too early to say but the performance I recorded from Mageia is very hard to emulate. It is buttery smooth to use, has got stability and is aesthetically pleasing without being unnecessarily complicated. Further, it is backed by a reasonably good documentation and an active community support. Though I didn't try out, but now Mageia 3 has Steam as well for active gamers.

Bottomline: Mageia 3 is a perfect distro for both Linux novice as well as expert. I fully recommend Mageia 3 for everyday use and you can download 32 and 64 bit versions from here.

You have to edit the connection in their network manager (not gnome's), tell it to let Gnome's network managed handle things, then connect. From there on out Gnome's network manager SHOULD be able to edit the wifi connection. It works fine in KDE because KDE's network manager isn't as deeply buried in the infrastructure as gnome's.

Just a comment for the reviewer (@arindam sen): as you installed a live distro, an image of the live environment is transferred to the disk, and you could have configured the time zone and location in the live and the configuration would have been ported to the image on disk.

Thx for another nice review arindam!I have never been a fan of KDE but KDE 4.10 and Mageia 3 and also OpenSuSE 12.3 really manage to change that slowly. OpenSuse is now my favourite for workstation pcs because it manages to offer a lot of advanced features but still being easy to use and aesthetic.Mageia on the other hand is a really beautiful and smooth distro that has such nice little features like the very handy tab for network shares in the Mageia control center. That makes it a real great distro for the day to day usage and is really challenging the trusty mint on my hard drive!

I agree, I am very impressed with OpenSuSE 12.3, missed out writing a review of it. But, with all its artwork and advanced features, OpenSuSE 12.3 KDE impressed me a lot! Even Mageia, as you mentioned, is very good for day to day usage and I have already replaced my LM 13 KDE with Mageia :).

There are additional backgrounds - they are shipped in /usr/share/mga/backgroundsAlso, there is a kde-background package, it is split out to save space on the cd images as other things are more important.

Good review, so I thought I would give it a try. Installed it through Imagewriter, it would not work in Unetbootin, just stalled on opening screen.

Though I tried a dual boot with Mint XFCE. it somehow broke my XFCE installation. However I carried on. A real pain installing printers, even then it could not find my HP Deskjet 3050A. Loaded Chromium, but Chromium would not update my synchronised files. Firefox would not import backed-up bookmarks. Lack of alternative backgrounds a bit of a pain. No Spotify installation. Seemed to be more of a resources hog than Mint KDE 14.

So I re-installed Mint KDE 14. No problems, printers recognised straight away, Chromium works perfectly, Added Conky LUA, no problems. Much smoother and more included apps. for me Mint 14 KDE is THE KDE distro.

Thanks for your inputs. I don't have a printer and hence, couldn't check out the printer settings. However, Firefox and Chromium worked without any issue in my case. I had only Mageia installed - possibly this is because of grub in Mageia and not grub-2. Possibly if grub-2 is installed and updated post-installation, it will recognize the other distro in case of a dual boot.

Thanks for the good inputs from your side. Those who are willing to install Mageia, should be aware of the issues you pointed out. By the by, for me, Linux Mint is THE DISTRO in Linux world, works everywhere and anything you throw at it :).

I thought I would try another distro coming from Mandrake, as I used to use Mandrake many years ago. So I've tried the latest version of PCLinux OS. So far it has been fine. Recognised my printers, and uploaded the required software. No trouble with Chromium, and easily installed Spotify through Wine. Seems to be fairly easy on resources as well, so I am giving it a longer trial.

I'm using Mint 14 Cinnamon as my main distro though and it seems extremely good.

Last week I tried out PCLinuxOS LXDE and was very impressed with it. I haven't seen a better looking and functional LXDE in my life. PCLinuxOS is very stable and performs really well. Only issue with PCLinuxOS is slow update of repositories.

Linux Mint is the best distro undoubtedly out there in the Linux world. It just works on any machine and on any configuration. Amazing distro!

Hi Arindam, great review as always, I've always visited your blog for couple of months now, since it offers great review and distro benchmarking.

I usually don't have much problem with installing a linux distro, even arch, but my Mageia 3 KDE just can't get pass boot screen / plymouth, some boot function, I've tried unetbootin, it failed to pass the plymouth.

After I get a closer look at your post I've tried imagewriter on Linux Mint Olivia, now I get the right Mageia menu but the problem is still remain, can't get pass plymouth.

Do you have any solution for this problem?And a review request, please review SolydXK it s

Hi,I use Acer Asppire V5-431 with Intel HD Graphics 4000 if I'm not mistaken.I've seen many reports on similar bugs in mageia bug tracker but haven't got a solution. How could I check it, if my graphic card is already in mageia by default?

Mageia worked really well with Nvidia as, I guess, the drivers are pre-installed. You can please search Mageia forums for the appropriate drivers, e.g. what I found here:https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4982

I have been a long-time user of Mandriva, back to the Mandrake 8.0 days. I have Mandriva 2010.2 running on 3 pcs, one is a laptop. I recently installed Mageia 3 64bit from DVD on a desktop pc. I am very pleased with ease of install and the way it has been smooth to use while retaining a lot of the Mandriva "feel." I agree with the comments about the smoothness and functionality present in this very pretty distro and look forward to getting my other machines up to speed on it soon.Thank you for posting your review. It is good to see this distro getting the attention it deserves.

Please check out OpenMandriva as well. I am currently using the alpha release for testing. Look and feel is pretty similar to ROSA but OpenMandriva KDE works quite well on my laptop. Mageia performs better but OpenMandriva looks different.

Surprised that Arch & Arch derived systems were so bad in your table. Is your table really meaningful; no cache or readahead optimizing for anticipated work loads, etc?

I use Unetbootin, so thanks to the comment on how to use dd - cos my usual usb-installer fails here. On my 'buntu-drivatives (eg Zorin) - it's easy to upgrade to the latest kernel, version. Just find the right PPA or terminal commands via Google. So running kernel 3.9.7 now. Is it as easy with Mandriva-derived op systems?

For Arch, the high RAM usage happened, possibly, due to absence of proper graphic card drivers. Chakra performed really well on my system. Additionally, if you see, the range of RAM usage is between 220-380 MB. In the age of minimum 2 GB RAM, I guess, it may not be that high. Win7 itself takes about 700MB to 1 GB RAM to boot the desktop.

I used Mageia for sometime and found it very easy to use. Just like Zorin or Linux Mint, the update manager will notify about system upgrades and it is just matter of a click. Mageia, ROSA and PCLinuxOS are all very easy to use. In fact, Mandriva was the first easy to use Linux OS and these derivatives retain the same.

I have installed Mageia 3 KDE dvd install, not live cd, been using it for 2 weeks now, I haven't had any kind of problems at the moment, nor any single crash, Mageia 3 is IMO one of the best Linux distro with kde DE around, easy to install easy to use, I have used in the past more than 10 linux distros and tested more than 30 linux distros, Mageia looks like a keeper!

Great to heat that. Even I like Mageia as a stable, almost trouble free distro. I have used Mageia sporadically but not on my main production machine. Based on your experience, I am tempted to use Mageia for sometime on a more continuous basis. Actually, I tested Mageia for a couple of weeks and then moved on to other distros :).

It is an interesting question. Both Mageia and ROSA are Mandriva spins but offer pretty distinct proposition. While Mageia resembles simplicity with elegance and efficiency, ROSA ships tweaked KDE with eye popping interface. Personally, I prefer efficiency more than aesthetics and hence, Mageia is my choice. If you see the table above, Mageia is the most efficient KDE I have used. Hope it answers your query.

Tried other distros, but felt Mageia was smoother to use, so as I had a separate /home partition it was a simple matter of reinstalling Mageia and the installation was fast and easy.

Mageia is rock solid. Best KDE distro out there.

I really like that the liveDVD has a small selection of basic apps. I hate cluttered menus in most KDE distros. The Mageia repository has other applications if you need them and both urpmi (command line) and rpmdrake work well for installing packages.

Mageia = easy to use, fast, beautiful and has friendly forum.

I will be using it on my production machine. (Didn't boot Windows in weeks now)